


Children of the Sun

by daphnerunning



Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, Xenophilia, duke is a furry, pretentious summary requires ridiculous tags sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-03-14
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-01 22:37:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnerunning/pseuds/daphnerunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of two creatures who were alike only to each other, and not to their kind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clouds Made of Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Title and chapter titles taken from "The Origin of Love."
> 
> I just have a lot of feelings about Elucifer and Duke and I have to get them out, yes good?

The aer krene stirred.

Not enough for the humans to notice, not yet. It stirred just enough, rustling in a little valley by the side of a lake, to wake Elucifer from sleep. Restless, he stretched, filing it away as a necessity for another day, another week. It would rise higher, but there were more pressing matters to--

The aer krene _roiled_. 

Elucifer’s feathers mantled in surprise, and he leapt into the air with a powerful spring off his haunches, senses all telling him to _go_ , to find the source of the disturbance, to _stop_ whatever was happening before it seeped out to poison the area, or worse.

The lake wasn’t far, just as he’d seen it in his mind. It drew him in, tugging at his senses, urgent, desperate for help that only one of his kind could give.

He crested the ridge, angling his wings to slow his glide, then beating them when he saw the small figures by the lake.

Humans. So, something had been done. This was no accident--or if it was, it at least had a cause, a source.

 _Later_.

For now, Elucifer landed gently on the shore, breathing in the toxic aer, taking it in, metabolizing it into the core of his being where it would wait, dormant and deadly, crystallizing with the rest of it. The aer krene, sinister and dangerous a moment before, quelled.

Elucifer sighed out a long breath, turning his head to fix on the humans by the lake’s edge. Much to his surprise, there was still a figure there, one who had not been frightened into running away by his sudden appearance. 

It was a boy, slight in stature and young in years, no more than ten. He stared at Elucifer, unafraid, unabashed, eyes wide in his head. 

“Child,” Elucifer began, prepared to give the _be not afraid_ speech, but the boy spoke before he had a chance.

“Were you always this large?”

He had a good voice, for a human, especially a child. Looking closer, Elucifer saw that his clothes were finely made, tailored to fit even a growing lad, and his hair was pale, tinged with just the slightest shade of....

Interesting.

He folded his wings, going down to all fours in a crouch to put himself closer to eye level with the boy. “All things great were once small. You were not born so large as you are now, were you?”

“Was a mountain once small?”

“If you have known it long enough. Where are your parents, little one? Do they let you wander alone in dangerous places?”

The boy pointed towards a nearby cluster of ruins--ruins that were once a shining new city just days ago, it seemed--without looking away from Elucifer. “My father is writing poetry in the ruins with his servants. My mother doesn’t come with us.”

Just-quelled, the aer shifted uneasily. Elucifer spared a stern thought for it, then turned his attention back to the child. That hair, those clothes, that manner of speaking in one so young...it had been many years since he’d deigned to care about the lives of men, so ephemeral and fleeting. “Is your father the Emperor?”

“No. But our lines were once one.” The child cocks his head, leaning back. “Was I in danger?”

“Why do you ask this?”

“You look at me the way my nurse does when I’ve been in a great deal of danger. I jumped out of my window once.”

“Why?” It wasn’t like him to be so inquisitive, but something about this boy made him curious, made him want answers in a way he hadn’t in many lives of men. 

The boy’s eyes were pale red, shimmering with concealed power. Did he even know he had it? Had he been told? “Because all things that fly must have been frightened at first. I wanted to stop being frightened.”

Danger was what the boy would be in if the other Entelexeia discovered him, his power simmering below the surface, a living tinderbox near the piled straw of the world around him. It wasn’t much, not enough to make him a true threat, but enough to aggravate the already-growing problem. With relations between the humans and his people as they were, it might be too much to leave the child alive. Especially if he kept wandering into dangerous situations. “Child--”

“Duke.”

Elucifer inclined his head. “Duke. Do you know of the power in your blood?”

There was a pause, and the boy’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard. “Yes. It’s in all the Imperial lines.”

“Will you let me burn it from you?”

Duke blinked, just once. Then, he nodded. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want to be the Emperor. He’s childless and ancient, and he likes my father.” He licked his lips, looking up at Elucifer. “Will it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” He closed his eyes, turning his face up to the sun, and waited.

It didn’t take long. Duke didn’t have enough of the blood of the Child of the Full Moon that it was part of his core, his very being. Elucifer extended his mind, wrapped it around the child, and chased down the threads of power. It had been years, centuries since he’d attempted such a thing, but there were forces at work in the world that gave him few options. He reminded himself of that when the boy screamed in agony, reminded himself that it was better than what would happen if Phaeroh found him.

The sun had risen fully into the sky by the time he was done, and the child collapsed sweating and panting onto the ground. Still no one emerged from the ruins or surrounding areas to see why a child, _this_ child, who was presumably important, was screaming, and Elucifer felt a flare of anger on his behalf. “Duke. Are you all right?”

Duke raised his head slowly, meeting his eyes. His hair was pure silvery-white now, no hint of pink, and he gave a tremulous smile. “Is it gone?”

“It is.”

“Thank you, sir.” A perfect, rehearsed response, in soft tones obviously full of pain, as the boy struggled to stand.

Elucifer moved forward, lending a furred paw, digging the talon into the ground for support. The boy hauled himself up, giving him another weary smile. “Thank you.”

Still no one came for him.

Anger flared brighter, and Elucifer found himself saying, “Did you fly? When you leaped from your window?”

“No. I fell, but I landed well. I’ve been trained in fighting arts.”

“Would you like to fly?”

Scant minutes later, the boy’s hands grasped the feathers on his shoulders tightly, slender legs hooked beneath his forewings as he launched himself into the sky. Despite losing a great deal of his personal life force in the last several minutes, despite the aftershocks of pain that must still have been wracking his small body, all Elucifer heard were shrieks of delight.


	2. So They Could Watch All Around Them And They Talked While They Read

Time passed differently, when he was invested in the lives of humans. He’d forgotten that. He’d slept for too long, content to let the centuries fall past as he communed mostly with his own people, sometimes with the Krityans, and let those few Entelexeia who _were_ curious deal with that rapid, emotional race. It had been a long, long time since he’d had conversations with humans, longer since he’d had a _friendship_ with one.

Landing outside Duke’s home, extending a wing for the boy to slide down from his window and onto his back, Elucifer knew for certain he’d never had a friendship like this one, with a human or with one of his own kind. He was old, but his memory was good, and he couldn’t recall ever taking such pleasure in the joy of another. Maybe it was the way Duke stopped looking lonely when they were together, or the way he’d never _not_ been waiting at the window, even when Elucifer gave no sign he would appear that night. Maybe it was the way he never stopped asking questions about the places they saw as they flew, despite the way Elucifer warned him he’d need to outlive every human on the planet to know everything.

“Will you?” Duke asked, shouting to be heard over the rushing of wind as Zaphias sped away beneath them in broad strokes of three pairs of wings. “Outlive humans, I mean?”

“I have as yet.”

“Then I will, too.”

“You’ll be lonely.”

“Not if you’re there.”

“You would make a better--a better Krityan than a human, Duke. They lead long lives, and think of much that humans ignore.”

Duke’s face pressed against his back, nuzzling into the feathers there. “I would rather be one of your kind. I would have you as my king.”

It wasn’t the first time Duke had said something of the sort, but each time it struck Elucifer anew. “Do you dislike your own so much? Your Emperor, your people?”

“Tell me what the Entelexeia are to you, Elucifer. Please.”

Elucifer fell silent, thinking. Duke never gave him less than a thoughtful answer to any question, and he deserved the same. “They’re my friends. They’re similar to me in blood _and_ in ideals, for the most part. They treat me with loyalty and respect. I care for them, and they for me.”

“That’s not what humans are to me.”

“No?”

“No. That’s what _you_ are. Except for the blood, I mean.”

“Duke, you’re not an Entele--”

“Not...that I want to be an Entelexeia. My form doesn’t bother me. I don’t feel like that for Khroma or Phaeroh or the young ones you introduced me to. Not...the same.”

Maybe it was the way Duke was far too old for his age, only twelve years old, something that was like an eyeblink when Elucifer was sleeping, when he was forgetting. Duke made him feel invested in the world once more, to care about its future when it had felt like so much maintenance.

Maybe there was something left to save after all.


	3. The Gods Grew Quite Scared of Our Strength and Defiance

Elucifer couldn’t deny that Duke was the reason--not the reason he opposed the fighting against the humans, but the reason he was able to _see_ why it was wrong. 

“We’ve given them a chance, and another, and yet more,” Zaraiah argued, scales clicking in anger. “How many times will you sit back and allow them to destroy the world?”

“I’m not saying to let them be,” Belius countered. She bated, her feathers settling again as she turned around in her area, annoyed. “They can be _reasoned_ with, they can be _taught_. Some of them are worth saving. They don’t need to use the blastia, what they call the apatheia to exist.”

“But they will. As long as there are humans, they will seek for the easiest solution.” Phaeroh, grumpy and annoyed, seemed to fill the room when he spoke despite his relatively small size. “It is their nature to always seek what is best for them without considering the consequences. They move too quickly! They forget their own mistakes and are condemned to repeat them!”

“But they don’t repeat their own mistakes. A human today is as different from one of a thousand years past as from a Krityan. They may as well be different species when--”

“But they _aren’t_ different species! They’re the _same_ species, who called the Adephagos out of the sky, and will do it again if they aren’t stopped! How many times are we going to solve their problems?”

“And what would you have them do?” Elucifer spoke up at last, and the muttering anger on the sidelines fell suddenly quiet out of deference. “Without the barrier blastia they are defenseless against monsters. You would ask them to give up their sole protection for our sake? That is as selfish as what they do, and they do it unknowingly.”

Phaeroh stared at him, aghast. “But...you were there. With me, you were _there_. You _saw_ how selfish and greedy they can be, how they refused to eradicate the Children of the Full Moon from their lines, how they continued using--”

“It is the nature of any creature to preserve itself first, and its environment second. Would you have them do any less?” Elucifer raised up onto his haunches, realizing he’d kept his wings spread for the stability of someone who wasn’t currently on his back, out of habit. 

“It is the nature of a virus, a plague to do the same!” Zaraiah, not to be intimidated by his size, wound back and forth, claws gouging great furrows in the stone beneath her. In the shadows, Elucifer could see many of the Old Ones behind her, shifting and nodding in agreement, as their forms dictated. “If we act for our species _and_ our environment, is it not better--”

“Enough.” He didn’t raise his voice over its usual volume, but the tone of authority rang out through the valley, enough that most of his people quieted down. He turned his head slowly, making eye contact with everyone who would dare. “We do not move against the humans. They are ignorant of their history. If you would, _educate_ them.”

“If they don’t listen--”

“Will you not make yourself heard?” His voice boomed out now, echoing off stone cliffs, making some of the young ones flinch. “Think well of yourselves, my friends, my people. We can again be saviors without being destroyers.”

As he was leaving the valley, prepared to return to his roost for the night, one of Zaraiah’s supporters muttered to himself, “If the King weren’t a human’s pet we--”

Elucifer was across the distance in an instant, powerful beak closed around the complainer’s furred neck. He held without snapping, as the dissenter went still, fighting his instincts to thrash, and Elucifer released him a few feet above the ground. “If you would raise a query for my actions, speak to my face,” he rumbled. “Blame not the humans for the world, nor for my behavior. If your King can be educated by a human child, surely you can do better for them?”

Cowed, young Vuree slunk back to Zaraiah’s contingent, where even she dealt him a swat. Elucifer waited several more moments, daring anyone else to call his loyalty into question, before taking flight from the middle of his people instead of walking out as he’d planned. 

There were things he needed to resolve.


	4. You Had a Way So Familiar, I Could Not Recognize

instead of flying to his home, he veered North, the flight relieving some of the quiet angry heat in his breast. The rest of it dissipated the second he saw a white-haired figure in the window, for all the world as though Duke had been waiting.

“Do you wait with your window open every night?”

“Only the nights you come to me.”

Elucifer chuckled, raising a wing for Duke to clamber down, waiting until the young man was secure on his back before taking off. “Sometimes I think you know my mind better than I do myself.”

“I can feel you when you’re near. You’ve been in my very blood since they day we met.”

A shiver that had little to do with the night air rippled through Elucifer’s feathers. “Duke...I would sometimes wish you had others. Others like you, who would give you friendship when I’m away.”

“There are no others like me.”

Elucifer said nothing to that. There was nothing to say to the bleak emptiness in the words, though he could read a great deal more from the emotions radiating off his young friend.

Instead of prying and opening old wounds, he asked instead, “How far have you traveled on foot, with your family?”

“Not far. Usually we go to Zaphias for the winter months.”

A place needn’t be exotic or far away to show the young man something new, something beyond his comprehension. He landed, let Duke climb off him to look around with that insatiable curiosity, and started to speak. “There was a battle here, long, long ago.”

“Between whom?”

“My people and yours.”

“When? Most of the humans I know don’t even know what you are.”

“Time out of mind.”

“But _when?_ ”

“A thousand years since.”

A brief pause, as Duke emerged from a nearby cluster of bushes scratching a welt. “Were you there?”

“Yes.”

“Were you old then?”

Elucifer laughed, leaning down to nudge the boy with his beak. “Yes.”

Instead of toppling, Duke grabbed him for balance, reaching up to scratch his crest. “Were you large then?”

“Not so large as now. I was in another form then.” Duke’s fingers were skilled, knew exactly how he loved to be scratched, after all these years.

“I wish I could change my form, as you have. There’s much I would do in another body.”

“I like your form, Duke. What can you not do?”

“I would fly with you.”

“You _do_ , on my back.”

“I would...”

“Yes?”

“I would ask questions a human should not.”

Elucifer narrowed his eyes, looking down at Duke’s carefully polite expression. “Have I ever denied you an answer about anything, my friend?”

The barest hint of color, delicate pink like the shade long purged from his hair, dusted Duke’s cheekbones. “I...would be indelicate.”

“Such things matter not to me.”

“To your kind?”

He rumbled out a laugh, rubbing his beak against Duke’s chest. “We are as different from each other as humans are from each other. But none, I think, are so shy as humans.”

Duke seemed to steel himself, smoothing his hands over Elucifer’s feathers, trying to act nonchalant. “I would ask you if your people mate as we do.” 

The question was not a surprise. “Duke...you have met our young ones. You think we do not mate?”

“I just--” The young man ducked his head, finishing softly, “I don’t know _how_.”

“And this is why you want to change your form?”

Duke pulled away, flushed darker still, and moved to sit on the edge of the hill. His eyes tracked the reflection of stars on the ocean, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know you think me too young. I will always be too young, compared to your kind.”

The night air was cool, comfortable as the breeze ruffled through his feathers. It was cooler still when he shucked them, a flux of magic and thought enough to pour him into another shape, one he hadn’t sought for centuries. It still worked, limbs still responding easily to his command as he strode forward, enjoying the sensation of the grass between bare toes after far too long. “And what,” he asked, clearing a Krityan throat, working muscles unused to functioning in such a way, “makes you think you are the only one who must change?”

Duke whipped around so quickly Elucifer was concerned he’d fall into the ocean. He kept his balance, though his eyes were wide as gald coins. “You...Elucifer?”

“Do you not know me still?” Elucifer looked down at himself, trying to see what Duke saw for the first time, and not his memory of the form. Long gold hair flecked with white, bronzed skin, broad shoulders, long fingers and toes. “Am I so different?”

Duke looked as if he were having trouble swallowing. He leaned forward slowly, hesitantly, slender fingers threading through Elucifer’s hair. 

His eyes fell half-closed at the familiar touch, so different on this scale, in this form. Yet it was still the same, just as the way he nuzzled into it, into the warmth of Duke’s hand, was the same.

“Is it still you? Do you still...do you feel it, when I touch you? Or is this a mask, a projection, is it all in my mind?”

Elucifer laughed, not unkindly, and stepped close enough that Duke could feel the warmth of his body, the touch of a hand on his chin. “Sometimes, my friend, you do ask too many questions. Do you feel my touch?”

“Y-yes,” Duke breathed, leaning forward, naked hunger in his eyes that Elucifer noticed, not for the first time. Not even the first time that night. He hesitated, pulling back an inch. “You don’t think me too young?”

“For?” It was cruel of him, perhaps, to ask. He knew full well what Duke wanted, had wanted for several years now. Sometimes, pressed close to his back during their night rides, it was difficult to ignore.

The flush was back in pale cheeks, but Duke didn’t look away, didn’t pull back. “To lie with me. I’m old enough for my own people, but compared to you--”

“You will always be too young,” Elucifer said frankly, pushing aside that spark of guilt as unimportant. “If you lived to be a thousand, I would still be many times your age.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”  
“Does it bother you?”

Duke smiled, such a rare occurrence that Elucifer couldn’t help but join him, moving closer still. He rested his forehead against Duke’s, strong hands coming up to cup the young man’s face. “I respect you as my friend, and I have cared for you these years. Humans are...faster, than we. Many times I forget--”

Duke kissed him. His lips were soft, eager, a strangled noise welling up in his throat as Elucifer pulled him close. 

For a moment, Elucifer couldn’t think, couldn’t focus on _anything_ except the sudden wash of Krityan hormones, the electricity he’d forgotten about, after so long in his present form. His arms went around Duke’s body, stepping closer, sucking the young man’s lip between his teeth. It was so fascinating, to taste again, to touch with smooth skin, to feel Duke’s body drawn tight with tension, trembling at only a kiss. _His_ kiss, _his_ touch, and he was unprepared for just how much he _wanted_. 

He was still less prepared for how much Duke wanted, how much he took. His back hit the ground, deceptively strong hands on his shoulders as Duke climbed on top of him, straddling, mouth hot and wet and hungry. 

He was less surprised to find himself hard, aching as Duke thrust down against him, seeking, close to desperate. Buttons--there were _too many_ buttons in the way, too many when everything was slick and warm and _now_ and he was just getting used to having fingers, and with a muttered word and surge of power, Duke blazed white for a moment, then knelt naked on top of him. He blinked crimson eyes, dazed for a moment, before he burst into a brilliant, delighted smile. 

There was no patience, no such thing as patience the first time, not when Duke’s breath was hitching, as his hips snapped up hard again and again, slick and hot and _needing_ , and nothing had prepared Elucifer for the raw hunger, the want for _him_ , just _him,_ on him and around him and against him, writhing in his arms--

Duke buried his face in Elucifer’s shoulder, gasping, sweating, clinging to him as the aftershocks coursed through them both, cooling slowly in the night air of Ehmead Hill. Elucifer pressed a dozen small kisses to his face, stroking long fingers through his silvery white hair, more content than he could remember being in decades.

Duke sat up first, licking his lips, eyes still wide and challenging. “You said we live fast, we humans.”

“Yes.” Elucifer reached up a hand to stroke the young man’s cheek, smiling when Duke turned to kiss his palm.

“Then...is it too fast for you to begin again so soon?”

Elucifer laughed, moving to pin Duke beneath him, holding him still against the ground. “I’ll try to keep up.”


End file.
